Days 13 and 14

The final two days covers the trip from Ogden, UT to Kingman, AZ to home.

Utah has apparently not had much rain, either. As we were driving south, the hills to the west were brown, while those to the east were green. Curious!

The southwestern portion of Utah includes Cedar City and St George. In the latter, there is a Mormon church, sort of like one of the temples, but smaller and less ornate.

A stately building! There's a golden eagle perched on the top of the dome.

This was taken from inside the car, so there are some reflections, but you can see the craggy hills, kind of. They were really high, with narrow canyons here and there. This was north of Las Vegas, descending about 4,000 feet to the flats of LV area.

For those that are not familiar, this is a Joshua tree. There are hundreds along the Joshua Tree Scenic Parkway, which is part of rte 93 from I-40 to Wickenburg.

That's it. Home is always a good place for a return. Hope you enjoyed seeing our trip reports.

Day 12

Today we drove from Pendleton, OR to Ogden, UT. It's nice to have warm weather, for a change, not having to wear a sweatshirt all the time! No rain is nice, too.

Leaving Pendleton, the lack of rain was painfully obvious.

The hills are barren and the fields are brown, except where irrigated.

This is the Snake river, which flows into the Columbia. It's serene at this point, crossing from Oregon to Idaho. Actually, we crossed that way; the river goes the other way!

This is the Capitol building at Boise, Idaho. It's mostly of marble.

This is the rotunda dome.

This is the Senate chamber of the capitol. The gallery is oriented in back of the Speaker's platform, somewhat different from other Capitol buildings.

And this is the Assembly chamber.

This the state seal of Idaho. It's made of 9,750 tiles!

The ride to Odgen was not interesting. The fields are as brown as those in Oregon, except those being irrigated. The difference is that Utah has many more fields being watered, giving the appearance of green everywhere.

Tomorrow, Las Vegas or more.

Day 11

Not much to talk about today. It was all driving from Surrey, BC to Pendleton, OR.

The border crossing was uneventful, although the time it took was 45 minutes or more. It was about the same going north as going south. I thought the Canada Immigration would be more lax than the US, but that wasn't so.

It was good to get back to mph and US dollars. Canada is really oriented to charge cards. We used VISA for almost everything. The bus from the ferry terminal to downtown Victoria required exact change, so we had to have the $5 in Canadian coins available for both the to downtown and from downtown trips.

We entered the US with a dollar Canadian coin and 9 Canadian pennies. About as close as you can cut it!

About the only interesting thing was seeing Mt. Ranier off in the western sky. It was pretty much obscured by clouds, but you could see it. It's in this photo, but you may not be able to make it out. Those are the Cascade mountains in the distance and Ranier is beyond them.

Pendleton, OR is the home of Pendleton Blanket Works, but we won't be able to tour their factory. The company offers a 90 minute guided tour through service tunnels, card rooms, a meat market, Chinese living quarters, jails and more. Sounds interesting! They also have a more traditional tour showing how woolen products are created.

Tomorrow through a corner of Idaho and on into Utah.

Day 10

Today we visited Victoria city on Vancouver Island. Victoria is the capital of British Columbia. The only access to the island is by ferry. We caught the 9 AM ferry, spent 1 1/2 hours on the water, then caught a bus downtown.
The first stop was the Parliament building. It was built in 1897 after several smaller buildings served the various functions of government. Each of the smaller buildings was built according to the style and interest of the time, which produced a hodge-podge called Bird Cages!

The legislative chamber is being remodeled, so this is the best I could do for a picture.

There is only one chamber, the Representatives. The desks were situated two sword lengths apart so that injuries wouldn't occur during contentious debates!

There are some stained glass windows in the building. This one commemorates the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign

This was our lunch spot, the Sticky Wicket. I had bangers and mash, Carol had steak and mushroom pie, and both of us had a nice glass of ale. Yum!

Next was the Royal BC Museum. It is amazingly extensive. The Human History floor had numerous First Peoples items, totems, house posts, masks, and more. Unfortunately it was too dark to take non-flash pictures, the only sort allowed.

This is a replica of Mungo Martin's house in his coast tribe location. Martin was, I think, Charles Edenshaw's grandson. Both were famous carvers and artists.

These hanging baskets were on just about every street light downtown. They are colorful and vivid!

Tomorrow starts the return trip to Tucson.

Day 9

Today was a visit to the Winter Olympics site of Whistler, about 60 miles north of Vancouver.

The town is very much a resort, with many shops and restaurants. There is a wide walkway that goes through it east-west.

Note how low the clouds are. It was rainy and foggy most of the day. The altitude is not very high, about 2,500 feet.

This is an area where you can rent a mountain bike, go to the top of the hill by lift, then have an exciting ride down.

Bike rental is big business here.

A few miles down the mountain is Olympic Park, where, ski-jumping, cross-country ski, biathlon events were held.

This is the Normal and High hill runs.The landing area looks much smaller than it did on TV.

The Inukshuk was the logo for the Vancouver Olympics. There were opportunities for anyone to make a simple Inukshuk just about anywhere. This was at the Biathon range; a whole row of them sit atop the rail.

This is the Biathlon range. You could try your luck with one of the rifles for $10. I was too cheap, but watched someone else do it. She missed every shot!

Tomorrow is Victoria Island.

Day 8

 Still Vancouver, BC.

This morning we visited the Museum of Anthropology, at the University of BC. This is the most extensive and well-done museum I've ever seen! Their design principle was to exhibit nearly all their collection, rather than keep 90% in storage..
The First Nation People exhibits were extensive. It's hard to conceive the number of masks, bentwood boxes, totem poles, baskets and so on that are on display. I've never seen anything like it.

The central hall had numerous bentwood boxes and totems. These are quite old, as you can see. The color has pretty much faded or worn off.

 There were a number of totems so old the wood had partially rotted. This next carving is by Bill Reid, a very famous artist. 

Once out of the central hall, there was room after room of NW Coast items.

Masks, masks and more masks!

And more!

Baskets, too. Shelves and more shelves of them.

Note the cabinet to the right. These are wide drawers that pull out with more stuff. Might be small baskets, might be basket material, might be other stuff.

Masks and hats.

This afternoon, we went to the Bill Reid gallery. I recommend the web site, www.billreidgallery.ca

There are several examples of Chilkat and Ravenstail weavings in the gallery. This one is by Evelyn Vanderhoop.

This hat is by Dolores Churchill. There is a video of Holly Churchill demonstrating how to harvest cedar bark from a tree, without harming the tree.

These three women were part of the NW Coast exhibit at the Eiteljorg and we (the guides) got to know them well.

This is one of Bill Reid's most famous pieces, Eagle discovering First Man emerging from a clam shell. This is cedar, but he has also made this same sculpture in yellow cedar, gold and silver. Amazing!

I couldn't show you the many jewelry pieces because photographs of them is not allowed in the gallery.

Tomorrow to Whistler.

Day 7

Today was travel from Seattle in low cloud and rain to Vancouver, BC.

Note that you can click on a photo to zoom in.

I forgot to mention yesterday our visit to the Portland Art Museum It appears to be a very old museum, but with some very nice exhibits. The Native American items were most interesting. They have on exhibit many Inter-mountain west and Northern CA baskets. They had very little pottery. Photography in the museum was prohibited, so no pictures.

In contrast, the Seattle Art Museum allows photography of all items, except where noted.

This is the main entrance, with a moving figure called Iron Man.

The Native American exhibits are mostly Northwest Coast items, many very old.

This is one of the items that is not old, being the product of wonderful glass artist Preston Singletary. We saw him in back of the Blue Rain gallery in Santa Fe last year, doing his glass blowing art. Amazing work!

Here's one of the very old items, a bentwood box. The sides of the box are made from one long piece of cedar. At a corner, a bit of wood is carved out of the inside (kerfed), the wood held over steam until flexible, then folded to a right angle. The process is repeated at each corner and the final one is laced up with spruce root.

This is an eagle mask of alder wood, ermine fur, cedar bark and abalone shell.

This is a very old wolf image hat. There were many items made by Charles Edenshaw, an old-time Haida artist. Many of his argillite carvings are displayed. Another artist that we remember from the Eiteljorg's NW Coast exhibit some years ago is Evelyn Vanderhoop and one of her Chilkat blankets.

This is a platform with several masks, Raven, Huxwu'k and others. Most are cedar, cedar bark, paint and hair.The large one in the center that looks like a mouth is actually a feast bowl!

They had this great Bierstadt painting and I couldn't resist making a copy!

Tomorrow Vancouver, BC.

Day 6

Today we drove from Salem, OR to Seattle, WA.

Note that you can click on a picture to zoom in.

The first stop was in Salem to see the Capitol building. This statehouse is not as fancy as some, but is elegant in white marble. The sculpture on the right is a family traversing the Oregon Trail, the one on the left Lewis and Clark led by Sacagewea.

This is the Senate chamber of 30 members. The picture over the Speaker's dais is of Oregonians celebrating admission to the Union. The rug has alternating squares of salmon and (something, I forget).

This is the chamber of the Representatives. 60 of them. The rug has diamonds of pine trees, the state symbol.

The state seal, embedded in the rotunda floor.

We visited the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia river. There are two power plants generating electricity for Seatlle and environs.The Columbia is the dividing line between Oregon and Washington. It's big and fast moving. There is a lock enabling river traffic to avoid what used to unpassable rapids. The drop in 60 feet and a boat can go through the lock in 30 minutes.

This is a fish ladder at the dam. It allows almost all the mature fish to get upstream during spawning season and the young ones to get down, without being chewed up by the turbines in the generators.

This is a viewing port under the ladder where non-fish can view fish swimming upstream through the ladder. The number of fish that pass up the ladder is really amazing, some 700,000 annually!

Note the eels in the lower right corner. They use the ladder, too!

Tomorrow Seattle and Vancouver.